Hollywood doesn’t always get the IT pro archetype wrong, industry leaders say

On the big screen, a gaming chair turns to reveal a person in a neutral-colored hoodie with headphones on. Behind them, a computer screen swirls with greenish-tinted code. They’re the IT hero of the movie who inevitably has to use their powers for good or evil tasks, like saving the world or heisting a gazillion in crypto.

You see them in the Spider-Man series (Tom Holland’s version), where Ned is tasked with being the “guy in the chair”; in a bedroom figuring out some bad business from a major corporation in the movie Hackers; or navigating the world of Silicon Valley in the eponymous television series.

While depictions of IT professionals in movies and TV is a fun trope, it’s important to remember that real IT pros transcend their onscreen clichés. They are people proficient in many areas, and ultimately tasked with protecting their organizations’ IT infrastructure.

Morgan Watts, VP of IT and business systems at business communications company 8x8, said, “There is an element of overdramatization, I think, on everything about hacking scenes and green terminals and these lone-wolf individuals that we have often portrayed. The reality is a little bit of a balance of both.”

And of course, they are not all the same “type,” so to speak. “You’re gonna walk past an IT person on the street, you may not know that you’ve seen them,” Watts added. “IT people are people.”

Bright lights getting it right. Hollywood’s representation of IT pros doesn’t always get it wrong, even if it sometimes errs on the side of parody.

“There’s some similarities; we do have some of the all-nighters when things break,” Watts said. “But people come together, that’s where the team element of working in an IT organization [comes in]because the context of what we’re trying to do, it’s typically not the one individual, it’s more like a group effort.”

Myke Lyons, CISO at Cribl, which builds tools for data processing, said that the non-IT public can fixate on the cinematic image of an IT pro sitting alone in their basement with headphones on, rocking the quintessential hoodie, but that look is a signal of group identity.

“Every conference I go to, there’s just tons of people that walk around that way, hoodies [are] part of our culture,” Lyons said. “You feel like you’re a little bit shielded from what’s going on around you, and [it] allows you to focus on what it is that you’re building.”

Missing the mark. While some work-exercises are group activities, a lot of engineers and developers are working individually on projects that require personal attention. Lawrence Whittle, chief strategy officer at HTEC, told IT Brew that IT pros might develop a reputation as introverted because of what their role calls for.

“In my own experience, having worked with a lot of engineers, including companies I’ve been CEO of on a day-to-day basis, engineers are pretty intense,” Whittle said. “They are somewhat introverted, but [at] 5:30 when we say, ‘Let’s go to the bar for a drink,’’ they come out of themselves.”

“I think it’s somewhat situational,” Whittle said.

Watts pointed to The Big Bang Theory as having technical banter and jokes that might be unfamiliar to those outside of the niche.

So, the actors in Silicon Valley might not always get it right by trying to make a new internet, or there might not be actual glitches to be discovered like in the movie The Matrix, but the depiction of IT culture and inside jokes seems to unite the community.

Update 09/24/2025: This article has been updated to refer to 8x8 as a "business communications company."